NSA posts encrypted tweet to recruit code breakers

The National Security Agency has decided to kill two birds with one stone by advertising for potential code breakers in cipher.

Some initially thought it was gobbledygook, but it turns out a
very cryptic text from the NSA was not the product of a
four-legged feline run wild on a keyboard or a smart phone gone
rogue in an agent’s back pocket. Rather, the tweet bearing the
hashtag #MissionMonday was a direct appeal to potential NSA
analysts who had the chops to decode the encrypted message.

The missive, consisting of nine blocks of letters, all of which
contained 12 characters except the third and the last, ended up
being an example of a substitution cipher, by which units of
plaintext are replaced with ciphertext according to a regular
system.

Twitter detective Daniel Shealey gave the Washington Post the
inside scoop on this cryptogram-solver, and the end result is
slightly more prosaic than some would have hoped:

Want to know what it takes to work at NSA? check back each
Monday as we explore careers essential to protecting your
nation.

The Daily Dot later contacted the agency and received
confirmation that the tweet is in fact part of a month-long
campaign of coded tweets that will “explore careers essential to
protecting our nation.”

“NSA is known as the code makers and code breakers,” NSA
spokeswoman Marci Green Miller told the online daily in an email.
“As part of our recruitment efforts to attract the best and
the brightest, we will post mission-related coded tweets on
Mondays in the month of May.”

The agency has been known to directly
appeal to hackers and crackers before, regularly throwing
down the gauntlet at the annual DEF CON hacker convention to
recruit potential cyber warriors.

The agency also made it known that those with a slightly
checkered past should not automatically be dissuaded.

“If you have a few, shall we say, indiscretions in your past,
don't be alarmed. You shouldn't automatically assume you won't be
hired. If you're really interested, you owe it to yourself to
give it a shot.”

The organizers of the hacker convention, however, were slightly
less forgiving towards the NSA’s “indiscretions” when DEF CON 21
rolled around last August.

Just over a month after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden blew
the lid on the agency’s dragnet surveillance programs, DEF CON’s
founder Jeff Moss asked federal government employees give the
2013 hacker convention a pass.

“For over two decades DEF CON has been an open nexus of
hacker culture, a place where seasoned pros, hackers, academics,
and feds can meet, share ideas and party on neutral territory.
Our community operates in the spirit of openness, verified trust,
and mutual respect,” Moss said.

“When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent
revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about
this relationship. Therefore, I think it would be best for
everyone involved if the feds call a "time-out" and not attend
DEF CON this year.”